BERLIN/KASSEL June – July 2017

June 14, 2017 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on BERLIN/KASSEL June – July 2017

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Design: Laurenz Brunner

For the documenta 14 radio programme Every Time A Ear di Soun, from 17th June – 8th July 2017, Mobile Radio produced 41 shows and two installations at SAVVY gallery in Berlin. The shows were broadcast on FM 103.0 MHz in Berlin, FM 90.4 MHz in Kassel and online, as well as intermittedly via short wave on 15560 kHz. Our daily radio productions consisted of two parts: a prerecorded morning show (Radiaphiles), and a live afternoon show (Render: live).

In Radiaphiles, Mobile Radio offer an overview of independent and not-for-profit community, ‘free’, campus, and pirate stations who provide a wealth of material and perspectives outside of the mainstream media orthodoxy. This series constitutes a major retrospective of the work of the radio art network Radia, whose collective mission is to make radio that transcends the borders and boundaries of land and language. Mobile Radio visit each station in turn to discern their motives and inspirations, and explore the work of one of their associated artists. Produced with support from Goethe Institut. Click on ‘Up Next’ in player to access all episodes.

In Render: live, a treasure trove of personal archives were opened for artistic exploration. Every day Mobile Radio delved deep into a collection of artefacts and memories and rendered them into radiophonic form: cassettes, minidiscs, vinyl, tape and conceptual works smothered in the hiss of time. Special guest appearances rendered these guidelines obsolete and opened the door to other forms of live radio shenanigans.

Some of the live events were also captured on video:

We also exhibited two installations at the gallery:

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A photo of Sarah’s installation Under the Hood – Clingradio in situ, taken by Anne Wellmer, whose photos of the Savvy Funk project you can find here.

HALLE (SAALE) October 2016

October 30, 2016 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on HALLE (SAALE) October 2016

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Radio Revolten was the largest festival dedicated to radio art worldwide. As artistic director and co-curators we were involved in all stages and aspects of the festival and temporarily relocated to Halle to help with the organisation.

The scope of the month-long festival included daily performances, more than a dozen installations, two exhibitions, a 24/7 radio station, a conference and several international meetings and much more by nearly a hundred artists from around the world. In April 2018 a documentation in book form will be published by Spector Books. The festival’s website now acts as an archive of the proceedings and contains specific audio-visual archive pages for our own activities as part of the programme. Click here to view this for Sarah or Knut.

Below are audio excerpts of Knut’s silence detection radio installation “Changing of the Guard” and Sarah’s three frequency broadcast “In the Air We Share”.

COLOGNE April 2010

April 25, 2010 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on COLOGNE April 2010

Art Special: Klingelpütz Parkuhr
Based in and around the Hansa Gymnasium, Art Special is an event held every few years in cooperation with Art Cologne. In 2010 the project was designed to establish new connections between the schools and colleges surrounding the small urban Klingelpütz park near the centre of Cologne. A group of 20 artists were commissioned by directors Uta M. Reindl and Georg Dietzler to work on individual projects within one of the schools. We choose to work with a group of 14 to 16 year old pupils at the Gymnasium on a radio installation for Klingelpütz park which we called Klingelpütz Parkuhr








We were assigned the student mentors Marieke Schneider, Samira Schäfer and Hannah Stelberg at the UNESCO-supported Hansa Gymnasium. Their job was to help us realise the project by managing our student group and offering technical assistance. Spanning several sessions we worked over a few months with the group to produce tiny soundscapes to play as a 72 hour sound installation in Klingelpütz park. The idea was that every hour on the hour the Klingelpütz park clock would strike all over the park – from multiple sound sources hidden in trees and bushes. Each and every hour would offer a new audio surprise to whoever or whatever happened to be passing








We wanted shower radios to diffuse the installation and ensure it remained weatherproof, so along with the students we selected some nice frogs for the job. Once we had tested the transmission set-up, we set off to the park to find suitable locations and test out some camouflage. It was noticeable to us how far removed today’s teenagers already are from the concept and awareness of radio. Yes, if you send a signal, any radio can pick it up!






The installation required a transmission site to host our radio transmitter and antenna. The perfect spot was a medieval tower, part of the former city wall. Now housing a youth club, it was possible to have easy access to the building. Unfortunately the pigeons had not all moved out of the roof space. [Photo of our equipment set-up by Alexander Basile]








We found some more willing volunteers who helped fix some radios in out-of-reach places. Others were simply well concealed by foliage, which, despite having drawn up a decent plan, made it somewhat tricky to perform ongoing daily checks to ensure that all were still broadcasting true to frequency and had not wandered off to a nearby station. The installation was designed to be perfectly quiet in between the short hourly soundscapes, therefore it required a fair bit of maintenance. Our helpers were a godsend






During the planning phase, we had been warned about attempting to work with equipment in the park because it was supposedly home to rival gangs, who would not tolerate an invasion of their territory by artists. After working there intensively over a week, we observed very little to cause concern. On the final day, some local boys discovered the radios and set about removing them from the trees. Watching them playing the dials, it confirmed our perception of a generation removed from the experience of receiving radio signals. Of course they were not happy when they saw me [Sarah] photographing them, and tried to intimidate me a little. I explained that I was documenting the radios as part of our project. It turned out that they knew about Art Special, so when they started up the next tree I asked them to leave the rest in place until the end. They gave up and ran off half exhilarated by their ‘crime’, and half curious about our extraordinary encounter, which had seen them get accidentally involved in an art project







Other public reactions were of equal puzzlement. A sound appeared, and then it was gone. What was it? How? Why? A soundscape suddenly alerted their ears, and just as suddenly all returned to normal. Until an hour later.

One radio hanging high above a corner of the park apparently frequented by junkies was destroyed. Someone had thrown rocks at it, perhaps spooked in the middle of the night by strange noises…

And who can blame them?

Visitors to Art Special heard about the installation in the park and went along to experience it. They did not know however where the radios were placed. This was deliberate, we explained to the parents of our group who were exasperated at not hearing their offspring’s work:

…the installation was designed to take the public by surprise, not to function as an exhibition space. It was fascinating as these visitors then described all the sounds they had actually heard when not sure what to listen out for. So for them the installation had been activated in a different way – by ‘standing in a park listening’







We had to dismantle the installation during the day while the park was still inhabited, but our apprehension soon turned to pleasure when people started asking us if we were the ones responsible for the noises. The old ladies assured us it would take more than a few peculiar sounds to disturb them, others told of how they had been convinced their friends were playing tricks on them for a few days until one of their party had managed to track down one of the radios. The mood was genial, people we met in the park were quizzical about the project, and some liked it so much they wished it would remain permanently active. We left feeling extremely satisfied and realised that we had become sentimentally attached to the special atmosphere defined by the boundaries of Klingelpütz Park. Today it is a fitting living memorial: until 1968 it was not a park, but the largest prison in Cologne. Between 1933 and 1945 more than 1000 opponents of the Nazi regime were executed here

NEWCASTLE/SUNDERLAND March 2008

March 8, 2008 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on NEWCASTLE/SUNDERLAND March 2008


Knut was asked to run a radio station for the the AV festival from Discovery Museum in Newcastle and also lend a hand for Soundscape FM in Sunderland. He invited Sarah, Dinah Bird and Jean-Philippe Renoult to join him. Round the clock for 10 days we broadcast radio art, experimental music, AV festival guests, live sound art, radio serials, stories, live streams from the Radia network and whatever else took our fancy. The nights were filled with the evolving sounds of Knut’s feedback installation


The interior of the museum, whose staff deserve a special mention for making our stay so easy and enjoyable. Here Honor Harger gives the opening speech to launch the radio station


Sarah explains the set-up to the Lord Mayor and listens to his radio tales


Dinah Bird interviews Honor


The rest of our crew – Jean-Philippe Renoult, Knut Aufermann, Sarah Washington


Studio life – Staalplaat Sound-system’s Geert-Jan Hobijn (top left) and Carsten Stabenow (bottom left). Mark Vernon playing live (top right) and an interview with Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (bottom centre)


Atau Tanaka (top left), radio art students from ISIS Arts (top right), Elizabeth Zimmermann from Kunstradio (bottom left) and our trio with Rhodri Davies (bottom right)


In conversation with Tetsuo Kogawa (top left) and Ed Baxter (bottom right, in stripes, dreaming?)


Looking into the studio from without, inside improvisation from Adam Parkinson and Bennett Hogg


Looking out from the studio at Yuko Mohri and her work Bairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation


We can’t leave Newcastle without acknowledging the most striking aspects of it’s culture and beauty. Spiritual home of freeze-yer-arse-off nightlife…..


And magnificent bridges